Parking: measuring the spaces

Courtesy of my French correspondent, Monsieur Ricardo Cabral, I am referred to this delightful article on one of my favourite underappreciated urban disasters, the over-provision of parking spaces because parking is typically unpriced. I have posted on this in the past.

The present study is simply tallying up the land allocated to parking spots in the US.

A conservative estimate is that the US allocates a paved land area over roughly 6,000 square miles – an area larger than the state of Connecticut – to accommodate cars or trucks. It is a massage overprovision that is largely a consequence of zero pricing of a scarce and valuable urban resource.

There are 3 times as many spaces as vehicles and 11 times as many spaces as families. And all that ugly, urban landscape-disfiguring concrete.

Thanks Ricardo.